Articulating Asia in Japanese Higher Education: Policy, Partnership and Mobility

Abstract

The subject of this book, the ‘internationalisation’ of higher education in Japan, encompassed a number of policy goals, including securing research resources for Japan’s universities and making them more competitive in the education marketplace. A great deal of research has been conducted in this area. Unlike most of the prior research, however, this book is not devoted to the subject of internationalisation in higher education. The author, Jeremy Breaden, claims that previous studies do not provide sufficient understanding of the activities and changes accompanying the internationalisation of universities in Japan. It is necessary, he maintains, to address the matter within the political and cultural context in which Japanese universities are situated. This book, therefore, seizes on the ambiguous nature of Japan’s self-image constructed in juxtaposition to an ‘other’, namely Asia, and employs it as an analytic tool. This peculiarity is reflected in the term ‘articulate’, included in the title of this work. Foregoing an assessment based on a distinction between policy and implementation, the author sets out to illuminate, or ‘articulate’, the process whereby ‘Asia discourse’ within the policy domain is reinterpreted at the university level and ultimately implemented in the form of programs (7).